Democrats with wandering hands: that's a real 'war on women'

Eliot Spitzer has tried to put allegations of using prostitutes behind him

Whenever a Republican guy is caught fooling around, it's treated by the press as a damning indictment of his party and his philosophy – proof positive of the hypocrisy at the heart of American conservatism. He has to quit politics, rediscover Jesus and preferably never show his face in public again. On the other hand, if a Democrat uses prostitutes or sexually harasses their employees their career is oddly evergreen. Why? Because they're officially designated "feminists" – flawed, perhaps, but at least they're on the right side in that grand existential conflict called The War On Women. Never mind that, behind closed doors, these "feminists" are engaging in a few skirmishes against women of their very own.

Take the three most recent examples of liberal hypocrisy in ascending order of awfulness. Anthony Weiner sent girls young enough to be his daughter photos of his private parts under the pseudonym Carlos Danger. The result? He's still in the race for Mayor of New York, and some Dems are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Eliot Spitzer says he won't vote for Weiner but is still asking people to vote for him for New York comptroller despite his own involvement in a prostitution scandal – and Spitzer remains the darling of liberals, despite the fact that paying a woman for sex is hardly a blow for gender equality. And, finally, San Diego mayor Bob Filner is accused of waging a campaign of sexual harassment to make Ron Burgundy ashamed to be a man. No one's standing by him now, but the allegations go back years – it's hard to believe that no one ever suspected Mayor Filner of having a less than respectful attitude towards the ladies.

The Democrat paradox on sex has been around for a very long time and the most representative example is Bill Clinton. When the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal broke, many liberals rushed to the defence of their guy – accusing his critics of being Puritan busy-bodies with sordid imaginations. Never mind that the President of Fun conducted his affairs in the sacred Oval Office, that he returned from Sunday services to receive relief from an intern, that he lied to his wife, or that he used his staff to facilitate the cover-up. Never mind either that this was part of a pattern of misbehaviour, including allegations of the uninvited fondling breasts and exposing his (apparently microscopic) genitals to surprised women. No, the attitude of Bill's fans was that having a sexual predator in the White House was preferable to a conservative prude with old fashioned views about abortion on demand. Throughout the Lewinsky scandal, most big name feminists were either silent or supportive of the Prez. Susan Faludi: "If anything, it sounds like she put the moves on him." Betty Friedan: "Whether it's a fantasy, a set-up or true, I simply don't care." Senator Carol Moseley-Braun actually appeared to claim that the seduction of Monica Lewinsky was a civil rights breakthrough: "Not so many years ago, a woman couldn't be a White House intern." Camille Paglia was one of the few who expressed appropriate disgust: "The president should be setting some sort of example in the workplace. That’s all I’m talking about. In. The. Workplace…. Since when did the president use the interns as a dessert cart?"

Feminists stood by Clinton because they judged that on policy he was their candidate. And it's this attitude – that a Democrat can do almost anything in private so long as he sings the praises of abortion rights in public – that's bred a depressing double-standard on the Left. Of course, there are caveats to that statement. Women and labour unions are now organising against Spitzer and the number of Republican officials who are publicly Christian yet privately hedonistic runs into the hundreds. But when liberals throw around concepts like a conservative "war on women" but are incapable of seeing a war on women taking place within their own ranks, they display a disregard for the dignity of ordinary women that is either hopelessly myopic or tragically cynical. It certainly ain't feminist.